


Drinkin' Down the 'Dush

by Thimblerig



Category: Baldur's Gate
Genre: Alcohol Imbibery, Assisted Introspection, Gen, Soulbonds of Dubious Consent, Trash Talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 01:14:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2832815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Bhaalspawn and a Bhaalspawn walk into a bar...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drinkin' Down the 'Dush

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blueinkedfrost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blueinkedfrost/gifts).



> This remixes the Imoen-Sarevok banters from Throne of Bhaal - you may find some familiar lines. The conversation touches on some of the... not-nice things that happened in canon, without, I hope, getting too explicit. (If you read this and think it needs a more formal trigger warning, contact me and I can oblige.)

"Hey, hey, Sarevok, can I ask a personal question?  In the interests of... building trust and... intra-team co-operation...?"

Sarevok slouched deeper into his tall chair and took a slow sip from a horn beaker.  "What do you want to know, girl?"

Imoen flicked out her wide grey sleeves and sat straighter on her perch on the high back of her own heavy chair.  "Are you naturally bald or do you denude your scalp when nobody can see."

"... What?"

Outside the Tankard Tree a missile whistled overhead and crashed nearby.  Imoen ignored the rocking of her chair, keeping her perch effortlessly as she said, "It could be important.  There might be... hair-stealing pixies or something.  Additionally, one of the potential answers would say interestin' things about your subterfuge techniques, seein' as no-one knows and, trust me,  _we have all been watchin' you._ "

"I wouldn't dream of spoiling the suspense."  He reflected.  "Or helping you win your frivolous betting pool."

Imoen pouted.  "I'll get that pile of sugared almonds yet, buddy."

He pinched the bridge of his nose with heavy, calloused fingers.  "Sugared almonds.  Can you not be serious in your life?"

"I can be serious!  When I try.  When we storm, er,  _respectfully visit_ General Il-Khan's headquarters for a nice chat I will be the seriousest person you ever saw.  I could be serious right now and ask you serious questions like, ooh, hmm."  She paused a moment in thought.

"What are your intentions towards my sister?"

Sarevok smirked.  

"I am but a loyal _servant_ ," he drawled eventually, "a strong sword arm, swift to do the bidding of my... benefactor.  Have I erred in this?  Is there some issue of my behaviour you might wish to chide me on, girl?  Some flaw or impertinence I must be chastised for?"

Imoen rolled her eyes.

"Perhaps an instructive duel?  We could clear some space and edify these... unwashed masses."  The big man gestured expansively around the crowded taproom of the Tankard Tree.  Saradush's militia jostled elbows with refugees, who ducked around stray and woebegone Bhaalspawn, who dickered with the bartender and the black marketeers, who sidled up to men and women offering a little flesh, a little comfort in this fiercest of times.  

"Duel?  Pfeh.  If'n I wanted you dead, Sarevok, you'd never see me coming."

He raised a sardonic eyebrow.

She raised an eyebrow of her own.

He sipped from his cup, losing interest.

 She leaned over and peered into it curiously.  "Watcha drinking?  Is that... blood wine?  Oh, Sarevok, could you  _be_ more cliched?  As an innkeeper's daughter I cannot let this stand."  She signalled a middle-aged barmaid with two fingers.  "My frie- _the big guy_ 'll have a nice Saerloonian claret, the 1352 vintage if you have it, and a golden sands for me, thanks."  When the drinks arrived she swirled her apple wine in her glass and held it up to the lamplight, watching the powdered eggshell rise in a whirl and then slowly settle down before sipping.  

"Hey, hey, Sarevok?"

He set his horn beaker down on the table with force.  "You talk a great deal, girl."

"Yes, but Sarevok?  Those two in the corner, the lady-of-the-evening and her co-worker.  I'm preeeetty sure they're neck-biters, and odds on they're with the crew laired up in that old prison we were gonna sneak through tomorrow and you could... _talk_ to them and it might be useful information-gatherin' and strategical."

"You do it.  You're of age, girl.  'Live a little.'"

" _I_ am no corpse-fiddler.   _You_ , on the other hand, are almost uniquely qualified to tap that without makin' it creepy.  C'mon.  Dooooooo eeeeeeeeeeet."

 " _No._ "

 "Awww...  You're no fun."  

She adds, more quietly, "Speaking of fiddling, what was it like, Sarevok?  Bein' all the way dead, I mean.  Comin' back from that."

His eyes hooded.  "The knowledge would do you no good, now, Imoen.  And by the time you need it, it will be too late."  He drained the last of his blood wine and swallowed, picked up the Saerloonian and tested it - an agreeable bite of iron and flint under the bouquet.

Imoen swirled her amber drink again and said, "An' having a bitty piece of my soul for your very own?" 

"Well, other than a slight obsession with food and the resurgence of a few pimples, it's been simply grand."  He sighed.  "Now leave me be, girl."

"No, I'm serious.  Does the fact that you've got a piece of me inside you make any difference at all?  Tell me... you owe me that much."

He sighed again.  "What do you wish to know, girl?  What are you curious about?  Perhaps you would be interested to know that I can feel the knives of Irenicus.  I can feel his hands and his breath, I _know_ what he did to you, girl..."

She gulped more of her apple wine.  "Really now."

"He had the most beautiful hands: long-fingered, elegant, strong.  You would have known him for an elf just from the grace of them, and for a user of magic, though he did not keep his nails in caster's points."

Imoen laid one hand flat on her bent knee and spread her fingers out.  "I like to keep my hand in, with the lock crackin' and gully-nappin'," she said, eyeing her fingernails, cut straight across and a little grubby.  "I'm plenty accurate in spellwork without a manicure.  Irenicus, now, he liked to use his tools."  Her eyes flashed, suddenly.  "But all o' that you could have picked up from the others or guessed, easy enough."

"Shall I go on?"

"Show me."

"You learned to dye your hair in bright colours from a halfling in the shadow trade.  You told yourself that it meant you could carry a bit of springtime and flowers with you wherever you went.  It's easy to hide a knife in a bouquet of flowers, but you tried not to think about that assassin's trick. Knives aren't 'cute'.  And you wanted to forget how _easy_ it was to think about sharp things and secrets."

She saluted the big man with her glass.  "Awright.  I believe ya."  

But Sarevok only continued: "... the naming of parts.  He'd open things out on his workbench, petal and pistil and stamen, testa and cotyledon and radicle, radial and median and ulnar; he'd show you the parts and he'd ask you,  _Where's the beauty, where's the use?_  And you wondered to yourself, was he training up an apprentice?  Or did he want someone, anyone, to give him that answer.   _Where's the beauty?  Where's the use?_

"And in the end he just fed you to his sister.   _Boring."_

Imoen's mouth twisted.  "My turn."  She went on then, spinning together half-remembered stories, guesswork, and cues from his manner, like an old bard had taught her once. 

"After that raid on the temple, after the Harpers buried all the little bodies and took the living ones away you went stray, just another feral kid roaming out in the desert, sneakin' in to the city when the weather turned cold.  An' you told yourself, around the ache in your belly, in the bitter nights when you slept on rotting garbage 'cause it was warmer there, that you'd make yourself the king of every dungheap, ruler of the multitudes, they all would know your name: Sarevok Costak.  Sorry, my mistake.   _Anchev._ "

Sarevok raised his cup to her and smirked again.  "A sincere effort, little one."  

Nettled, Imoen continued, the words coming from... somewhere.  "Master Rieltar Anchev, a grease-haired up-and-comer he was.  Used to take a chain to you for every little thing, but you made a deal for power and you weren't going to break that 'til it suited you.  His wife, now.  Weren't the sharpest needle in the pin-case and she drifted on lotus half the time.  Used to straighten your collar every time she saw you.  Then her hand'd float up and she'd brush mud off your cheek that weren't never there and it'd drive you  _up the wall_ , all ticklish like.

"You found her in the garden pool that day, all languid with the lilies windin' in her hair and you were furious, 'cause now you'd never find out what in the nine hells she'd wanted from you."

Sarevok's lips flattened to a straight line.

"You let the half-paladin flatter you," he said.  "He wasn't bright and he had a temper, but he was tall and his eyes were pretty, brown as a pot of tea brewed on a long march.  He talked poetry and flowers straight out of one of your foster-father's romance novels and you enjoyed that game, enjoyed pretending you were a lady of worth, a lady to be sought and valued.  He'd realise you were a no-name scruff soon enough and move on, but you could be a friend to him either way.  Everybody needs a friend, right?  Someone to talk them down from a rage... but the storms he sheltered in his soul were too familiar to you, too comfortable.  One broken thing wooing another..."

Imoen downed a mug of ashy suz-ale snagged from a passing tray.  "She came in with the new hires, mixed in with a bunch of mercenary scruff 'at turned up for the Sembian wars.  She paced through them, spear-straight, and _oh!_ the leagues of travel in her feet, and the scores of deaths in her eyes, and the silence that rang through her like a tenor bell in the moments between the ringing.  She told you,  _In this world we walk on the roof of hell, gazing at flowers,_ and she  _understood._ And you loved her.

"But then she wanted to go back to Kara-Tur with all its eight hunnerd million gods, where you'd be just a drop in the pond, just another spirit-child.  She wanted you ordinary.   _Boring._ An' now you're stuck in the might-have-beens."

Sarevok rolled his shoulders.  "The innkeeper - he said he caught you stealing jewellery from his pocket when you were small, but you don't remember that part.  There was a town up in the hills, frosty, with a mill with sails that creaked in the wind.  You sat on a bench with the fat man, sharing the biggest pork pie you'd ever seen - you must have been hungry.  Every time he laughed his belly jiggled and you laughed too, to see it, your grin stretching wide to crack your face.  Later, when he realised you wouldn't stop thieving from his patrons, he planted things in their gear - bon-bons and toys, glass beads and little painted books.  Apples.  He sent you a... yes, he really sent you a  _complimentary deluxe fruit basket_ after my, heh, notorious demise, and you laughed and laughed and laughed..."

"And?"

"There is no 'and', child.  Not all memories are bad ones."

Another missile shook the inn and a militia-man staggered, jostling the barmaid, whose tray went flying.  Sarevok and Imoen both ducked as the tray and glasses soared over their heads.  Imoen eased herself to the seat of her chair and let her tousled head rest on the high back.

"I still need another drink, big guy."

"I won't deny that, little girl..."

Later that night Gorion's Ward, Hero of Baldur's Gate, Saviour of Suldanessallar, Irenicus' Bane, Godslayer, Demon-Queller (and author of some well-received volumes of light poetry) leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, as Sarevok manoeuvred slowly up the stairs.  He was drunk and swaying, and every time the building shook he had to stop and regain his balance, and readjust his burden - a bundle of pink hair and grey robes, snoring like a dwarf.  He stopped and a long-suffering expression walked across his face as the girl drooled on his neck.

The Hero raised one eye-brow.  "What were you two talking about, so long?"

"Flowers."  He handed off Imoen's weight to her sister, who staggered a little herself, and brushed a little mud off the pink-haired girl's cheek.

"Sleep well, sister."

 

**Author's Note:**

>  _"I'll get that pile of sugared almonds yet, buddy."_ \- The hamster doesn't consider gold to be legal tender unless it's mixed with latinum, which is hard to come by on Faerun.
> 
>  _she swirled her apple wine_ \- having no in-game information as to what Golden Sands actually is, I posited that it's apple wine with powdered egg shell to pull out the cloudiness. Better explanation here: http://www.barbarapleasant.com/cloudyapplewine.html (There is remarkably little information on the inn beverages available in the BG wikis. Internet - you nearly failed me! But I forgive you.)
> 
>  _though he did not keep his nails in caster's points_ \- my head-canon is that Dynaheir and Xan, as magic-users, have long pointed fingernails for the same reasons classical guitar players do - because they're useful in their craft.
> 
>  _your name, Sarevok Costak._ \- there's a bit of confusion in the original game as to his surname; I'm jumping on that.
> 
>  _He wasn't bright and he had a temper_ \- I'm honestly quite fond of Anomen, but Sarevok is not the kind of guy to speak well of him. Since I'm remixing things to start with, lets go with some kind of Anomen/Imoen ship in SoA that... probably did not end well.
> 
>  _In this world_  
>  _We walk on the roof of hell_  
>  _Gazing at flowers_ \- Haiku by Kobayashi Issa, translator unknown to me.
> 
>  _he really sent you a complimentary deluxe fruit basket_ \- I honestly considered leaving Winthrop's fate as uncertain as it is in the game but... screw it - this story is plenty dark as it is.
> 
>  _Sarevok manoeuvred slowly up the stairs. He was drunk and swaying_ \- Aside from Strength, those two have weirdly similar stats: Sarevok could drink Immie under the table, but it would have taken hours for the small difference in Constitution to have a meaningful effect.
> 
> Please to forgive the lack of plot. I hope I kept characterisation straight and the interest going even so...


End file.
